Do Criminal Representatives Hinder or Improve Constituency Outcomes? Evidence from India

Nishith Prakash and Marc Rockmore

No 2014-20, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: The recent increase in the number of criminally accused politicians elected to state assemblies has caused much furor in India. Despite the potentially important consequences and the widely divergent views, the implications of their elections to state legislative assemblies on constituency-level economic performance are unknown. Using a regression discontinuity design and data on the intensity of night lights in satellite imagery at the constituency level, our results suggest that the cost of electing criminally accused politicians on measures of economic activity is quite large. Using estimates of the elasticity of GDP to light, we find that the election of criminally accused candidates lead to roughly 5 percent lower GDP growth per year on average. These estimated costs increase for candidates with serious accusations, multiple accusations, and accusations regarding financial crimes. Our result survives variety of robustness checks.

Keywords: Growth; Indian Politicians; Information disclosure; Regression Discontinuity; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 O12 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 62 pages
Date: 2014-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-ger and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Working Paper: Do Criminal Representatives Hinder or Improve Constituency Outcomes? Evidence from India (2014)
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